Antonis Samaras

Samaras was born into an upper-class family. In his youth he played tennis, winning the Greek teen tennis championship at age 17. He pursued higher education in the United States, earning a B.A. in economics from Amherst (Massachusetts) College in 1974 and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1976. From 1977 to 1993 Samaras served as a member of the Greek parliament for the conservativeNew Democracy party. In 1989 he was appointed minister of finance, and shortly thereafter he became minister for foreign affairs, serving in the position in two successive governments. In 1992 Samaras parted ways with New Democracy over his hard-line stance against the newly independent country of Macedonia, which he believed should not share a name with the Greek region of Macedonia. After a stint in the Greek parliament as a member of the Political Spring party, which he formed in 1993, he returned to New Democracy in 2004 and served terms in the European and Greek parliaments. In 2009 he was appointed minister of culture in Greece and became president of New Democracy.

That year marked the beginning of the euro-zone debt crisis, in which Greek debt played a large role. Over the next several years, Greece implemented severe austerity measures, and the EU and the IMF bailed the country out financially. In the run-up to the 2012 parliamentary elections, New Democracy proclaimed its support for the second bailout plan—although Samaras himself had voted against the initial bailout—and for staying within the euro zone. The party won a narrow victory in the May elections, but Samaras failed to form a government. Elections were held again the following month, with another narrow win for New Democracy. Under pressure to develop a strong plan to guide Greece through its financial crisis and to renegotiate the terms of the bailouts, Samaras formed a coalition government with the social democratic PASOK party and the Democratic Left, leftist parties that also favoured remaining on the euro currency.

Samaras oversaw continued efforts at economic and public-sector reform, as his government sought to limit the social and political costs of both while securing continued aid payments from the country’s international lenders. The Democratic Left departed the ruling coalition in June 2013 in protest over the closure of state-run Greek Radio-Television (ERT). In November the remaining New Democracy–PASOK coalition government survived a no-confidence vote and projected a return to economic growth in 2014, despite the economy’s contraction for the sixth straight year in 2013. Although Samaras and New Democracy finished second to the anti-austerity party Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left) in elections to the European Parliament in May 2014 that had been cast as a referendum on the government and its handling of the bailout, his coalition continued to cling to its narrow majority in the Greek parliament.

When Stavros Dimas, Samaras’s candidate to replace outgoing Pres. Karolos Papoulias, failed in three parliamentary votes in December to muster the majority required to elect him, parliament was dissolved on December 30. In the resulting snap parliamentary elections on January 25, 2015, New Democracy finished second (with about 28 percent of the vote) to Syriza (which won about 36 percent and 149 seats, two seats short of an absolute majority). Syriza quickly formed a ruling coalition with the Independent Greeks, a smaller anti-austerity party (which won 13 seats). On January 26 Samaras handed over the reins as prime minster to Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras.